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Ho’ike and Hawaiian Festival connects families old and new

At the end of Three Days of Aloha in the Pacific Northwest, one woman says, 'I feel like I'm home again'

By Lauren Dake, Columbian Political Writer
Published: July 30, 2016, 7:10pm
9 Photos
Dancers show off their skills at a performance during the Ho'ike and Hawaiian Festival in Esther Short Park in Vancouver.
Dancers show off their skills at a performance during the Ho'ike and Hawaiian Festival in Esther Short Park in Vancouver. (Photos by Sam Wilson for the Columbian) Photo Gallery

Esther Short Park was full of aloha on Saturday.

And, as Auntie Ella Stewart will tell you, aloha doesn’t just mean hello and goodbye, but love, family, being thankful.

“This festival makes me feel like I’m home again, and I’m thankful we can share the aloha with everybody,” said Stewart, who was showcasing a wide range of Hawaiian crafts at the Ho’ike and Hawaiian Festival in the park on Saturday.

Stewart moved to Oregon in 1966 after meeting her husband, who was stationed at Pearl Harbor in the Navy. When she first moved, it was difficult to find the sticky rice and poi she loves. Fourteen years ago, when the Hawaiian festival first kicked off, it was a place she found some of her favorite treats that reminded her of home. These days, she comes more to see her ‘ohana. And everyone is her ‘ohana, or family.

“People come every year, and you get close to them. There was one woman who couldn’t come last year because she had shingles. This year, we embraced,” Stewart said.

On the stage behind Stewart, people were dancing the hula.

Norio and Charlene Colipano, high school sweethearts who grew up on the Hawaiian island of Oahu and moved to Portland 20 years ago, were on the hunt for some local food. Maybe some Malasada, fried donuts, or a Hawaiian plate lunch.

They’ve attended the festival numerous times and always run into people they knew decades ago back home.

“We’ll run into our classmates,” Charlene Colipano said.

The Hawaiian festivities, stretched out over the weekend, were called the Three Days of Aloha in the Pacific Northwest.

Despite the hot weather and hundreds of festivalgoers, it was difficult to find a plastic bottle of any sort. For the first time, the festival had a theme, ‘E Malama i ka ‘Aina,” which means “caring for the land.”

Kaloku Holt, who is the vice president of the foundation Ke Kukui Foundation, which supports Hawaiian and Polynesian cultures, said growing up in Hawaii you are always taught to “take care of what you have, respect it.”

A big part of the festival, he said, is exposing children to the Hawaiian culture and values.

“We are teaching it’s important to take care of the land; we hope it will spread,” he said.

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Columbian Political Writer